Australian Special Forces Killed 39 Afghan Civilians

https://www.wsj.com/articles/australian-special-forces-killed-39-afghan-civilians-unlawfully-inquiry-finds-11605780498

by justicezyx • 6 years ago

4 1 6 years ago

zxcmx• 6 years ago

Problem: how do you have an elite murder squad that just kills exactly the people you want and no others? What if grandma gets in the way?

How about Hamed, who might know a guy who knows a guy, who might jeopardise the goals of Murder Squad? How important is not murdering random people vs achieving mission objectives? What if Hamed is a prisoner and slowing Murder Squad down will jeopardise the mission?

It's eerily analogous to the AI alignment problem. It seems like not having hard core elite Murder Squads would be preferable to pretending we can ask people to do their job in a moral vacuum.

I don't pretend to be right on this, and I expect reasonable people to disagree, but if you set up the incentives to prioritise mission success over human life, you will obviously get mission success at the expense of human life and a culture that is proud to kill people to get the job done (thats what makes them different from infantry). "Isn't that what you asked for?"

Australian Special Forces Killed 39 Afghan Civilians

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